An Ear Infection and Fluid in Her Lungs

Katie and winter have never gotten along all that well. Each year, as the temperature drops, she begins coughing, wheezing, and having trouble sleeping at night. Eventually it gets bad enough that she has to use a nebulizer to break up the mucus in her lungs and allow her to breath easier. That is how we ended up discovering that she had leukemia last winter. She had been sick for several days and even the nebulizer wasn't helping her to fight it off. She was exhausted from lack of sleep, and as we discovered at the hospital, lack of red blood cells. We had become so accustomed to her being sick that it was only after she really took a turn for the worst that we took her to the doctor.

This year, we are having none of it. Katie began coughing again as soon as we had a few cold days in a row and we began listening to her breathing very carefully. She was wheezing a little, but it all seemed to be upper respritory. A few days later it was worse. She was still coughing and wheezing more and it was sounding deeper in her chest. We used the nebulizer but it didn't seem to have any effect. So we took her to the doctor.

As it turns out, she has an upper respritory infection, and her lungs do sound like they have some mucus in them. She also has a bad ear infection that she has not complained about. After having sorted all of that out and taken a trip to the pharmacy, she was back home with a new bottle of Amoxicylin. Lets hope she gets better quickly and can stay strong and healthy for the foreseeable future.

Revisited by Croup

Katie came down with a case of the croup again the other day, coughing loudly and uncontrollably for hours on end. Luckily the worst of it was over in under 24 hours and she only lost one night of sleep. The coughing was not even slowed by vapor rubs, hot showers, humidifiers, or a drink. We did manage to find one home remedy that appeared to work. Cold air seems to do the trick. If we took her outside for even 5 minutes, she stopped coughing. Once she stopped coughing and relaxed for a bit, she was fine to go back inside.
Now she seems to be fine. A little cough is lingering, but nothing like what she was suffering from.

Trick or Treat

Halloween was definitely a treat this year. We took the kids walking around town with 13 other kids for 3 hours trick or treating. They loved it. Katie was trick or treating like a pro. She followed her brother up to one front door after another. He knocked, they both said "Trick or Treat" and they both said thank you after the treats were delivered.

Here they are carving up their pumpkins the night before Halloween.

Here is Katie in her little lion costume. This was Josh's costume when he was younger.

Here is Josh in his Optimus Prime costume. He was very happy to be dressed up as a transformer.

After almost 3 hours of trick or treating, Katie was looking pretty tired. Josh was dragging his feet by then too.

When we got back home she perked up just thinking about all the candy in her pumpkin. In the picture she is straining to hold it up for the camera.

An finally, here are the pumpkins that we carved all lit up in front of the house. I (Rick) carved the one on the left from a pattern using my Dremmel. Josh thought that was pretty cool.